Hydrant woes due to 'Rocco regime'?

By Evan Lips, elips@lowellsun.com

Updated:
10/15/2012 08:36:25 AM EDT

BILLERICA -- Firefighters have faced some heat after it was revealed last month that hydrant inspection has not been part of the union's work contract for years, Dan Barrila, a firefighter and president of the Billerica Firefighters Union, acknowledged.

The town's indifferent approach to hydrant inspection was not the reason a home on Lupine Lane was declared a total loss after a fire on July 20, according to Fire Chief Tom Conway.

Early that morning, firefighters discovered that a valve on the closest hydrant was broken, rendering it inoperable. A hydrant on a neighboring road was used, but thanks to several pumper-style trucks, water never stopped flowing during the response to the Lupine Lane inferno.

But a look back at town records shows Billerica's firefighters do not deserve the brunt of the backlash.

In 1997, Town Meeting passed a bylaw, drafted by current Selectman Mike Rosa, to address inspections. Rosa, a precinct representative at the time, said last month he authored the bylaw in response to a fire in the town's Pinehurst neighborhood that gutted a 7-Eleven convenience store.

After the bylaw passed, records show that a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, to inspect hydrants was signed by the firefighters' union.

Town officials have used MOUs as a means to test whether an added work assignment is doable.

Advertisement

In Billerica's case, adding hydrant-inspection language during negotiations in the spring of 1998 meant firefighters started that summer the tedious process of inspecting each of the town's roughly 1,800 hydrants.

Rosa said he remembers driving through town and spotting crews testing hydrants.

Records show the inspection process continued throughout the next decade, but abruptly stopped in 2007.

In 2006, firefighters union members were in the midst of renegotiating their contract. Finance Committee member Rino Moriconi was sitting in on negotiations. Moriconi said Friday that he couldn't remember 100 percent what happened during negotiations and therefore couldn't comment.

"Let me put it this way -- this happened during the Rocco regime," he said.

The "Rocco regime" refers to the time Rocco Longo served as Billerica's town manager.

Fire Capt. Joseph Bradley, who was leading negotiations in 2006 for the union, said he thinks nobody intentionally omitted hydrant inspection from the contract. He talked about a trip to Boston where both sides appeared before an arbitrator to settle a dispute that arose when the town raised the co-pay rate on firefighters' prescription medicine.

Bradley said a deal was reached in which the union dropped its grievance over the prescription co-pay. In exchange, firefighters received raises and an EMT stipend.

After the 2006 agreement, a contract was printed up in Town Hall, sent to the Fire Department and signed by Bradley and other fire officials.

"That's where the part about an omission comes in," Bradley said. "The part about inspecting hydrants was omitted, but neither side noticed it."

As a result, the MOU expired without anybody realizing.

According to Selectman Bob Correnti, Longo never informed any of the town's boards about the expiring MOU.

Longo left Billerica in February 2008 and is now Marshfield's town administrator. He could not be reached for comment.

On Tuesday, Town Meeting will be asked to address the oversight via a $50,000 warrant article that would be used to pay overtime wages to Water Department workers assigned to inspect the hydrants.

"I don't remember anything being talked about," Rosa said Friday about the expired MOU. "Had there been a discussion, I would have certainly remembered, since I petitioned for the bylaw."

Bradley insisted there was "no sleight of hand" that caused hydrant-inspection language to be omitted from the contract. That year, the union willingly agreed to drug testing, a concession that sparked a bitter labor dispute in Boston.

"I don't think there was anything malicious," Bradley said. "There was never a fight in the town manager's office about the fire hydrants."

Welcome to your discussion forum: Sign in with a Disqus account or your social networking account for your comment to be posted immediately, provided it meets the guidelines. (READ HOW.)
Comments made here are the sole responsibility of the person posting them; these comments do not reflect the opinion of The Sun. So keep it civil.